Union News - October 2023
The union is constantly reminding its members to use sound judgement when accessing taxpayer related information. The rule of thumb is simple: if it is not in your inventory, if it is someone you know, a colleague, friend, someone you are just curious about do not access. You will get caught and there will be consequences. The CRA systems have become so technologically advanced that a “red flag” is raised immediately when accessing information that has no direct correlation to your work. It may take a few days or a few weeks but ultimately you will be asked to explain your actions.
Unfortunately, these warnings go unheeded all too often by both new as well as seasoned employees. The consequences can be significant, starting at a minimum of a five-day suspension up to and including termination of your employment. Just think what your two-week paycheque is, divided in half, and that would be the minimum financial penalty you would receive. What about no longer having any income at all? You need to ask yourself, “Was is it worth it?” Likely the answer is NO.
The monitoring that can be done with the system goes far beyond just tracking system accesses and determining their work-related need, it also tracks keystrokes. While this may have always been the case there is a troubling trend, possibly in its infancy, being used by the CRA. We all know employees occasionally make mistakes and enter information incorrectly. It happens; usually an employee will just backspace or delete the entry and enter the correct information. It seems to be an innocent, simple mistake. Unfortunately, there have been a few cases where this has occurred, and the employee has been disciplined for an “unauthorized access” where no access has actually occurred. To be clear, the employee never hit enter, so how the employer could define that as an unauthorized access is puzzling.
This discipline seems very harsh, and we just want to highlight to you, our members, the need to exercise caution. We always advise members that if they have entered something that they should not have, they should immediately tell their supervisor. This may mitigate any possible discipline. In a scenario where someone had just keyed something incorrectly and does not enter it, should they be going to their team leader and advising of that? It is an interesting question.
As these matters go through the various levels of the grievance process, we will have a better idea if this is the approach that CRA will continue to take, or if common sense will ultimately prevail.
Communications Committee